My "What do you think about this boat?" thread

Great minds think alike, I arrived at $11,000 today as well, although I was going to forego the cut and buff at this price. Might as well ask for it, can always use it as a negotiating point I found a marine surveyor today who works out of Pittsburgh and covers Deep Creek Lake, still waiting for a call back from a second guy but the first one seemed like he would work out fine. $20/foot plus a $70 trip charge.

Sending the offer via email now. Not sure what to expect, I got the impression that any offer was a good offer, but this is a good 30-35% lower than asking price. Will see tomorrow I guess.

We have family in ABQ so I have been looking at transportation to Amarillo, TX rather than Phoenix, we could use the delivery as an excuse to visit family and Amarillo is an easy day trip from ABQ. That'll shave almost 750 miles off the delivery, and seems like it will cut $500-600 off the price based some of the initial bids I'm getting. I got an estimate of $1000-2000 to Amarillo from uship, haven't created an actual listing yet though.

To be continued...

 

Got an email back this morning, they accepted the offer Working out a few minor details, have a survey scheduled for Tuesday. Crossing fingers for a successful survey!

@Muggsy, when you had your boat transported, who did you use? Did you find someone on uShip, or use some other transport company?

 

You guys have been a great help so far

Of course, it seems that I may have popped the champagne cork prematurely. The deal we made is for the boat from the seller and the trailer from Bill's Marine. Sales Hack called this afternoon to tell me there's a problem with the trailer, the brakes are completely inop. Then he tells me that it would be cheaper to buy a new trailer than to fix the brakes. Wtf?? I asked him to run the trailer through his service dept to find out exactly how much it would cost, I can't see it being more than $700-800 to completely replace the entire brake system?? No trailer makes it prohibitively difficult to get the boat to AZ.

Anyway, I sent him an email this afternoon that our deal was for a boat and a working trailer for $11,000. If he can't find a way to make that work, I'll have to keep looking. I sent it near 5pm his time, so no response this afternoon. I guess we'll see tomorrow if we actually have a deal. If you guys were in my position, would you stick to the original deal, or be willing to negotiate a bit more?

 

Btw I posted a uship bid a little while before learning about the trailer problems, already got a bid for $1150 from a 5 star shipper. So looks that I might have transportation figured out for a boat that I may or may not be buying

 

Sales guy came back with a hard no on fixing the trailer this morning. I checked with the shipper who's given me a good bid on uship and he's willing to tow without trailer brakes. Called sales guy, he was with a client. Left message for him regarding shipper's willingness, asked him to call and discuss options almost 3 hours ago, no call back yet. At this point I'm wondering if the whole trailer thing is an excuse for him to back out of the deal. I'm done trying to contact him, he may call back still but otherwise it seems that the search continues.

 

This deal got weird fast, everything with the trailer from the beginning hasn't made sense, from the problem itself to his responses and lack of willingness to help problem-solve. I'm giving up on this one, doesn't feel good any more. There will be another.

 

Sales guy ended up calling me back, our conversation helped to set my mind at ease about this deal. I think he's either just too busy or a bad communicator. Either way, I decided I don't want to lose this deal over a set of trailer brakes.

So...call me crazy...

I'm flying up to Pittsburgh Saturday. I'm renting a uHaul pickup and driving down to Deep Creek Lake. Inspecting the boat Sunday morning. If all goes well, I'll complete the purchase for the boat and trailer. I ordered a complete brake kit from etrailer.com for < $500 and shipping it to my hotel in MD. It's the same brake setup that's already on the trailer, so I'm optimistic that will be mostly a bolt-on swap. I'm flying Southwest where bags fly free, so I'll be accompanied by 100lbs of my favorite tools. Going to replace the brakes myself in his parking lot. I'll have the uHaul pickup so I can drag the trailer around with me where I need to. I'll have all day Monday and the first part of Tuesday morning to work on the trailer, then drive back to PIT for my flight home Tuesday evening. Boat and trailer will stay with the dealer until I get someone over to pick it up. Currently waiting for ETA on cut and polish so I can schedule transport.

I was initially trying to avoid a trip up there but we have plenty of miles so the tickets were cheap. The uHaul pickup isn't much more than an economy car. Found a good rate on a nearby hotel. The weather is nicer in MD than Phoenix. Should be an adventure.

 

Tool bags packed tonight, 48 lbs each

 

Also, totally random and weird thing. I was browsing Google image search for teal 252s to see what they look like in the sun, and my dad's boat that he sold in 2012 popped up in the search results from the buyer's uship ad. My dad passed away 2 years ago, brought back some good memories seeing this

http://www.uship.com/shipment/1998-Cobalt-252-Bowrider/59355068/

 

The adventure begins!

 

Feeling right at home in my rental...

 

...and ready for some trailer repair. Meeting at 9am tomorrow to check out the boat, hope it goes ok, this is a lot of stuff to get together to come home empty handed!

 

Thanks guys! Will check in again tomorrow morning with the verdict. Now it's happy juice time, cheers from the Green Turtle sports bar in McHenry, MD